Chief Judge Virginia Phillips is pleased to announce that the United States District Court is sponsoring an exhibition of postwar photographs of jazz life by Herman Leonard. Shot in New York between 1948 and 1956, Leonard's work documented the birth of bebop. K. Heather Pinson, the author of The Jazz Image (University Press of Mississippi, 2010), a study of Leonard's work, has said, He was a master of jazz, except his instrument was a camera. His photographs are probably the single best visual representation of what jazz sounds like. The exhibition, which begins in September, is from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery and features Leonard's iconic images of jazz legends such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Quincy Jones, Thelonious Monk, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, and Dinah Washington.
As part of the exhibition, the Court is hosting a reception to honor Leonard's life, his work, and iconic American jazz artists he captured with his camera. The UCLA Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance is scheduled to perform. The event will be free to the public and the Court is making a special effort to reach our community's secondary school students to raise their awareness of jazz and its titans. The reception is scheduled for September 21, 2017, starting at 4:00 p.m.
This exhibition is also presented in celebration of the 2016 Grand Opening of the new state-of-the-art 1st Street Federal Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles.
Video: Herman Leonard and His World of Jazz
Save the Date: Herman Leonard: Pillars of Jazz
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